Nimiq (NIM)
Nimiq ranks #180 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1310: 1130 of the 1309 assets ahead of it are not native coins but tokens or claims. A token is issued on a host blockchain rather than running its own; a claim stands for an asset already counted. Of the 1557 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 61% are tokens, 32% are claims on other assets, 6% are memecoins and 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 65/100 · provisional, B to A |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #180 |
| Rank counting claims | #1310 |
| Market capitalisation | $4M |
| Price | $0.000256 |
| Circulating supply | 14,524,511,840 NIM |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000,000 NIM |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Nimiq Albatross (single-chain PoS) |
| Network purpose | Payments |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A — 65 out of 100, provisional (from 10 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 60 to 66 (B to A).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 9.1 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 7.3 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 7 | fixed maximum supply of 21 billion |
| Distribution | 9.2 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 8.3 | 17.2% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis (April 2018) issued 2.52B NIM, 12% of the 21B cap: 1.05B to NET token holders (100 NIM per NET) plus creator, team, early-contributor and Foundation vesting allocations. The rest was mined openly (PoW until November 2024) or minted as PoS rewards. nim.sh reports total 14,631,543,367 NIM, of which 10.37B mined and 1.74B PoS-minted (2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 9.3 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 7.2% of supply sold. Public NET token creation on Ethereum, June–July 2017: 10.5M NET to contributors, reported at about $10M. NET converted to 1.05B NIM. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. PoW block rewards (April 2018 to Nov 2024) went entirely to miners. Under Albatross PoS, block rewards go to validators and their stakers. No foundation or developer share was ever taken from issuance; the Foundation and team allocations were in the genesis (premine). source |
| Decentralisation | 5.5 | average of 4 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze, blacklist or halt key; supply follows a fixed curve and validators can only be jailed or deactivated by protocol rules. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The only full node, nimiq/core-rs-albatross (Apache-2.0, 'Copyright 2018 The Nimiq Foundation'), is developed by the Nimiq core team, which also sets the protocol upgrades. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 7 | Gated by stake: any holder with enough stake can validate: access bought with coins |
| Nodes (Source) | 4.9 | 30 active validators or block producers (source: Active) |
| Security | 8 | 6.4 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 10 | largest 8.67%, largest three 24.84% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 7.8 | about 96,300 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 1 | not mined: another consensus, 1 |
| Clients (Separate code and teams 10, separate code or teams 9, a fork by the same team or a stale second 8; one client: a new version within 12 months 7, 24 months 6, none in 24 months 5, none in 48 months 3; a second in development +0.5, a second seen running +1, 8 at most with one client; chain ended 0; 1 point) | 7 | one client, latest version Sep 2026 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 6.9 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 8 | about 724 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0 | a block every 1 second |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 10 | 0.1 MB limit, 60 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | Micro blocks (~1 s) are produced by a single validator and only become final when the next Tendermint macro block (every 60 blocks, ~1 minute) is signed by 2f+1 validators, per Nimiq's protocol docs. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Albatross "full" sync mode stores only max_epochs_stored (default 1) epochs of history; "history" mode keeps everything. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | Albatross client "light" sync mode syncs from macro blocks with a zero-knowledge proof of the election chain instead of trusting a server. |
| Privacy | 3.5 | 3.5 of 10: whitepaper privacy 3.5 of 7, extra features 0 of 3, 1 not yet researched source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Accounts are created from keys users generate themselves; transfers are validated by signature, with no identity condition in the protocol. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 0 | An account ledger: one running balance for each address, so the remainder stays at the sending address and its payments share one public history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | – | |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 0 | Account balances and transfers are public. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | Sender and receiver addresses are public. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | libp2p gossip relays transactions directly; no Dandelion-style relay or built-in Tor. |
| Programmability | 2.2 | 2 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Only fixed account types (basic, vesting, HTLC, staking) in Albatross; no script or VM. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | m-of-n multisig wallets built on MuSig2 over Ed25519 (2 to 16 signers), and time locks through vesting contracts and HTLC timeouts. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | HTLC account type (SHA-256 or Blake2b hash, timeout), used for NIM swaps with Bitcoin and other chains. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✗ | No DEX found trading the coin itself: none on its own chain (DefiLlama), and not on THORChain, Maya, Chainflip, Komodo DeFi, BasicSwap, Bisq or Haveno (checked 2026-11-04). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No cross-chain feature in the protocol beyond HTLCs. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | No token or NFT type in the protocol. |
| Demand | 4.2 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 2 | 2 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 1.7 | $12,792 traded in 24 hours; #1745 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $69,471) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 7.7 | 1.8% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 5.8 | $2,067 within 2% of the price on 2 exchanges, 0.06% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 1.4 | $3.7M, 1.4 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 10 | no futures, options or margin on the exchanges read |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 1 | its own node and wallet, counted as 1: no wallet in the site's directory lists it yet |
| Record | 9 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 8 | 8 full years since 2018-07-26, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 9 | 4 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 617 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/nimiq/core-rs-albatross); Reference client nimiq/core-rs-albatross Mainnet v2.2.0 released 2026-09-17; v2.1.0 (2026-08-31), v2.0.0 (2026-08-11, consensus-breaking) and v1.3-v1.7 all in 2026. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Albatross Mainnet 2.0.0, Aug 2026: consensus-breaking fixes binding validator keys into the election header and skip-block state root into the aggregate proof; 1.5–1.7 (May–Jul 2026) many panic/bounds fixes. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Nimiq Proof-of-Stake (Albatross) mainnet, 19 Nov 2024: replaced 1-minute PoW blocks with 1-second micro blocks. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Nimiq PoS launch, 19 Nov 2024: native staking and validator transaction types. |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 10 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| No halt, freeze or reversal in five years | ✓ | |
Ten sections, weighted equally, each 0 to 10: consensus (the two ladders), supply (the supply scale and a fixed cap that holds), distribution (premine, fundraising, developer share, holders), decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes), security, scalability, privacy, programmability (what the scripting layer can do beyond the whitepaper's payment system), demand, and record (age, development, conduct). They are built from the criteria in the second table: privacy, scalability, security and decentralisation are the Cryptocurrency Standards among them, as follows: privacy (the whitepaper's three checks a base of 7 of 10, three extra features up to 3 more), scalability (four measures and three features), security (pool diversity, network activity, hashrate, clients and two checks) and decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand are two: the supply, scored against 21 million, and demand, the average of seven measures of the market and the wallets. Provisional: parts marked — are not yet measured and are left out of the average. A rating of structure and market depth, not a price forecast or investment advice. How the grade is built · Highest-graded cryptocurrencies.
Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
Radix XRDB
MEVerse MEV
Particl PART
PlatON LATAAll Proof of Stake chains →Proof of Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Monero XMRA+
Bitcoin Cash BCHA++
Litecoin LTCA+
Ethereum Classic ETCAAll Proof of Work chains →Supply
14,524,511,840 of a maximum 21,000,000,000 NIM are in circulation — 69.2% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 17.2% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 7.2% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 30 |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
Genesis (April 2018) issued 2.52B NIM, 12% of the 21B cap: 1.05B to NET token holders (100 NIM per NET) plus creator, team, early-contributor and Foundation vesting allocations. The rest was mined openly (PoW until November 2024) or minted as PoS rewards. nim.sh reports total 14,631,543,367 NIM, of which 10.37B mined and 1.74B PoS-minted (2026-10-23).
Public NET token creation on Ethereum, June–July 2017: 10.5M NET to contributors, reported at about $10M. NET converted to 1.05B NIM.
PoW block rewards (April 2018 to Nov 2024) went entirely to miners. Under Albatross PoS, block rewards go to validators and their stakers. No foundation or developer share was ever taken from issuance; the Foundation and team allocations were in the genesis (premine).
The site has no label yet. Initial and total supply come from nim.sh's supply endpoint; the NET conversion from Nimiq's transparency report. Where the 200M NIM pre-staking campaign (2024) was funded from was not established; if newly minted to a team wallet it would add about 1.4 points.
Sources: github.com · nim.sh · nim.sh · medium.com · coincentral.com. Researched 2026-10-26, high confidence.
What a regulator has said
No SEC/CFTC determination — unclassified.
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
How CoinSpectrum ranks Nimiq
Nimiq is #180 among cryptocurrencies and #1310 in the market ranking, which lists wrapped coins, staked derivatives, stablecoins and tokens alongside them. CoinSpectrum counts an asset once, and counts only cryptocurrencies: assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus. A wrapped coin, a staked derivative or a stablecoin is a claim on something already counted; a token, memecoin or otherwise, runs on another chain's blocks. All of them are listed, each in its own section, and none is added to the total. The 1130 places between Nimiq's two ranks are held by claims and tokens, not by other networks. The methodology sets out the rule and the counting rule argues for it.
The price above is the median of the exchanges the site reads live, checked every minute and cross-checked against a market snapshot (how market data is gathered). The grade is scored on published criteria, each with its source (the method). The site is independent, nothing on it is a paid placement, and its statements are signed (about CoinSpectrum, the manifesto).